Updated Weekly

01012016

New years often bring about slight or slightly major changes in how I operate. Usually it’s more because of hardware I got over the holidays than a point in the Earth’s orbit we arbitrarily separate between one year and the next, but it’s still a change nonetheless.

I already posted about how transformative the Steam Controller has been to my home theater PC, but I feel I really need to emphasize it: I’ve barely used my mouse at all since getting the Steam Controller. I feel like this thing has finally made my HTPC begin to feel like a console that still does everything a Windows PC does. It’s also helped possibly finalize the compartmentalization of my daily computing activities.

The other big thing I got over the holidays was a laptop. My last laptop broke down once and for all sometime in 2008, and I haven’t had a real mobile work machine since. My iPhone (another component in this hardware trifecta) can get the job done for productivity if there’s absolutely no other option, but when I type and do other work I still feel I need a full-blown mouse and keyboard interface. I even deliberately avoided touchscreen laptops because I dislike the keyboard-touchscreen combo. Maybe touchscreens and tablet front ends are friendlier to most people, but I personally have begun to miss old utilitarian hardware interfaces. They still have their purpose in certain areas of use.

That brings me to how I’ve decided to use each of the devices I’ve gathered over the last couple years for the foreseeable future. As it stands I’ve got a laptop for work and anything involving heavy typing, an HTPC for living room entertainment (that’s gaming, video content, whatever), topped off with a phone for reading and social media.

We’ll see how that pans out in 2016 but I think it should give me the most flexibility with the fewest number of devices to deal with. I don’t know how getting an actual console will factor into that. Windows 10, which my laptop came with, is a whole other component I’m only beginning to explore.

Games to start off 2016? I honestly don’t know yet. There’s nothing I absolutely have to get in January, so I can wait a bit before I really start plotting out what I’ll play in the first half of 2016.

Overall I guess the only things I can really hope for in 2016 are that I can keep this day job I managed to land while also getting a leg up on freelance writing. Moving from 2015 to 2016 hasn’t really changed the situation for those aspirations, but I guess it’s worth restating them.

BULLETS:

The new set of Durarara!! episodes is on Netflix now, dubbed.

Detective Conan is up there too but apparently they said “screw starting from the beginning” and have just started with the latest season (which is probably like season 19 or something).